According to PatentlyApple.com, Apple, Inc, rushed to get a trademark application filed in Europe last night for a new product it announced yesterday at its Apple Event, the Ear Pod.
As we have discussed before Apple has been awful about obtaining domain names that match their products prior to announcing them and this is just other case.
The domain name Earpod.com has been registered since 2008 and is being forwarded to a hearing clinic site at: myhearpod.com.
The company that owns the domain name earpod.com owns a trademark on the term “hearpod” and maybe in a position to object to Apple’s trademark or sued Apple for infringing on its mark especially since the own Earpod.com.
Certainly it’s an issue Apple should have resolved prior to yesterday’s announcement.
The domain Earpods.com has been registered just since last year under privacy at Name.com.
The domain goes to a page which includes contact information for the domain as an email address at DNSR.Com which stands for Domain Name Sales Report.
This is another domain name that Apple should have acquired prior to the announcement.
Amen. I think the creative side of the company needs to talk to the legal side before releasing new naming conventions. This is an all too common problem with fortune companies; not enough due diligence and interdepartmental communication…even supposedly savy companies like Google used to have this problem in the early 2000s. No need to buy every extension out there, but at least make sure your new product’s tentative name (or TM) doesnt belong to some one else!
It’s clear from the way they handled the gTLD application process that Apple is not as astute when it comes to domain names as their new biggest competitor, Google.
Just shows their stupidity and arrogance. An even bigger story is how they filed a UDRP for
a.pl which is a site that sells fresh fruit in Poland!
About time Apple Inc gets to taste their own medicine. I hope the owners of the Earpod trademark sue Apple for what they’re worth.
Speaking of a.pl – the a.pl case is just another outrageous example of Apple’s “we think we rule the world” game. Their reasoning in that case is nothing but a load of nonsense.
Maybe Apple should stop focusing on suing everybody, and put more effort/time into developing their core products. The iPhone5 was definitely not all that compared to some of the other phones on the market, and in a years time Apple will be lagging even further behind.
@ Mr.T
It isn’t like Apple is the only company who sues other companies. Suing over patents or trademarks is business as usual, and every single company out there with any value, does it on a regular basis. It’s just that Apple, being the largest company in the world, gets way more attention in the news when they do it.
On a side-note, I remember when some people hated Microsoft as much as others now seem to hate Apple… but how many people thought, a decade and more ago, that Apple would one day be worth 2.5 times as much as Microsoft? The price of success, I guess.
Just after the release of its Earpods i tried to pick the .com one but found it registered and found .co the second best . So i proudly own EarPods.co any one who is interested to own it can email me at contact@earpods.co
If one goes to the UK’s ipo [Intellectual Property Office] web-site and enters the term “Apple earpods” then there is detailed information regarding the fact it is a trademark. However, if one simply enters the word “Earpods” , it does not show it as a registered trademark at all. Is it the IPO web-site that is at fault, or is the trademark “apple earpods”, not simply “earpods”.
What happens if people register domains simply with the word “earpods” like Haseeb Tarig has just done? Is he in breach of trademark legislation and can Apple take legal action against Mr Tariq to stop him from using …or selling…EarPods.co ?